Schürmann was born in the village of Schledehausen, near Osnabrück, Germany, and was soon bereaved of his parents, his father dying a year after his birth, and his mother when he was eleven.
Both men obtained their ordination as Lutheran pastors in early 1838, and travelled to South Australia on the Pestonjee Bomanjee later that year, arriving in Adelaide on 12 October.
[1] Both Schürmann and Teichelmann believed that colonisation was a menace to Australian Aboriginal life and that to remedy its damaging impact, conversation had to be a two-way street, with due deference to the need to interact with native peoples in their own languages.
[3]Schürmann and Teichelmann ran a school for Kaurna people at Piltawodli (located in the Adelaide Park Lands), and gained most of their knowledge of the Kaurna language from three respected elders: Mullawirraburka ("King John" / "Onkaparinga Jack"), Kadlitpinna ("Captain Jack") and Ityamaiitpinna ("King Rodney").
They recorded around about 3000 words, a sketch grammar, hundreds of phrases and sentences along with English translations, traditional songlines, and textual illustrations of differences among dialects.